We had a real hands-on week and shored up the activities we will be working on the rest of the summer.
My 3 projects for summer RET program
1)Spin coat DNA for another lab measuring different pieces of the sample
2)Using COLTRIMS laser with 5th harmonics to look at an organic with chlorine-make it a radical by blowing off the chlorine
3)Design and construct Interferometer (Sagnac) for 2D
To this end, I needed a crash course on the Spectrophotometer and spent two full days learning to overcome errors. I started with a few calculations of Optical Density. What is the optical density of a 1um thick film of DNA?
We did a bit of research on DNA (evaporated) and also determined the extinction coefficient of double stranded DNA.
We used salmon DNA in different concentrations dissolved in water and ran them through the Spectrometer. This was a blast! We determined that it was critical to get to a three sig fig repeatable measurement and spent a lot (a lot) of time cleaning cuvettes, pulling water out of samples and other pieces of the puzzle to weed out errors. We were able to finally get to a specific absorption by careful measurement and math!
I now know wayyyy too much about Salmon DNA!
The next absorption rates we are testing will be Fluorescein. A really cool dye. We need to find its absorption rate in multiple concentrations. The check to see the absorption is proportional to concentration. Love the lab time!
In addition, we spent a few hours testing birefringence of titanium dioxide crystals. We used a polarized laser (2 turned at 90-degrees) so that without a crystal, no light reaches the detector. We rotated a crystal between two polarizers to check how much each crystal rotates polarization. We want to know if the material can be used as a mirror for high harmonics (EUV light).
My 3 projects for summer RET program
1)Spin coat DNA for another lab measuring different pieces of the sample
2)Using COLTRIMS laser with 5th harmonics to look at an organic with chlorine-make it a radical by blowing off the chlorine
3)Design and construct Interferometer (Sagnac) for 2D
To this end, I needed a crash course on the Spectrophotometer and spent two full days learning to overcome errors. I started with a few calculations of Optical Density. What is the optical density of a 1um thick film of DNA?
We did a bit of research on DNA (evaporated) and also determined the extinction coefficient of double stranded DNA.
We used salmon DNA in different concentrations dissolved in water and ran them through the Spectrometer. This was a blast! We determined that it was critical to get to a three sig fig repeatable measurement and spent a lot (a lot) of time cleaning cuvettes, pulling water out of samples and other pieces of the puzzle to weed out errors. We were able to finally get to a specific absorption by careful measurement and math!
I now know wayyyy too much about Salmon DNA!
The next absorption rates we are testing will be Fluorescein. A really cool dye. We need to find its absorption rate in multiple concentrations. The check to see the absorption is proportional to concentration. Love the lab time!
In addition, we spent a few hours testing birefringence of titanium dioxide crystals. We used a polarized laser (2 turned at 90-degrees) so that without a crystal, no light reaches the detector. We rotated a crystal between two polarizers to check how much each crystal rotates polarization. We want to know if the material can be used as a mirror for high harmonics (EUV light).